Sunday, April 28, 2013

CVG plans put historic murals in peril

We’re exploring how certain places have shaped our community personality, what we might learn from them and what some neighborhoods need to be healthy for next generations.

Let us know what places you have passion for, your concerns and hopes for those places. If you are getting things done in your community, we’d like to hear about that, too. Email Carolyn Washburn, editor and vice president.

They were saved once, in 1972. That’s when plans were announced to wreck the train station’s concourse. Fourteen of the murals, representing the Cincinnati area’s leading industries when the terminal was built, moved across the river to what morphed into the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

Now, they need to be saved once more. Nine of those industrial murals must be moved, or they will be destroyed when two of the airport’s mothballed and outdated terminals are demolished.

Airport officials want the murals saved. “We want to see them find a good home,” said Candace McGraw, the airport’s CEO. But the terminals have to go.

Wrecking the murals is unthinkable. They are huge (20 feet tall, 20 feet wide, 8 inches thick and 8 tons apiece), priceless works of art. Famed art deco artist Winold Reiss created Union Terminal’s mosaic murals, including those in the rotunda of what is now the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal.

They represent the people who built Greater Cincinnati. They honor the workers who made the Ivory Soap at Procter & Gamble, the butchers who slaughtered the hogs in the meat-packing plants of Porkopolis.

Time and money are of the essence here. Demolition could tentatively begin in 2015. McGraw said the airport is “working with the city of Cincinnati” to find the murals a good home. She added that while the deed shows the airport owns the murals, the city has the right of first refusal when they become available. And, the city wants them.

“We have about a 24-month window,” said Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory. “If we don’t succeed, cameras will chronicle the destruction of these great murals. That’s not going to happen on my watch! We must do this. So, we have to get running.”

And raise money. Mallory estimates relocating the murals would cost $5 million to $7 million.

He knows the city does not have that kind of money. Cincinnati faces police and fire layoffs and a $35 million budget deficit. Mallory plans to appeal to the generosity of business leaders, foundations and government grants.

In an exclusive and emotionally charged interview with The Enquirer, the mayor revealed he has assembled a team of architects, engineers, historians, and movers and shakers to save the murals. His goal is simple: “Bring the murals back home to Cincinnati.”

But where? Mallory sees them at the city-owned convention center.

“They’re a set. I don’t want people needing a scavenger hunt map to find them,” he said. “The convention center has tons of wall space. It’s on a concrete slab that can handle the murals’ weight. You can just punch a hole in a wall to bring them in.”

He’s open to other sites. But, wherever the murals go, it can’t be outside. The elements would destroy their mix of tinted mortar and tiles, in 8,000 colors, most the size of a nickel, all polished and cut and angled to catch and reflect light. The tiles’ positions and surfaces make the murals glow and create the illusion of movement.

“They are not some abstract depiction,” Mallory said. “They are special to Cincinnati, special to Cincinnati’s industries, special to actual people.”

The figures on the murals came from photos Reiss took of local workers. “They are not imaginary. This is real.”

Use the slider, or tap the image on a mobile device, to see the photo and mural